A new review of Alabama federal inmate Clarence Aaron’s clemency request is being undertaken. Aaron’s original request was denied by President George W. Bush, but recent reports by ProPublica and The Washington Post revealing a racial disparity in pardons has brought renewed attention to his case.

According to ProPublica, white applicants are four times more likely to receive a presidential pardon than minorities, and African Americas have the least likelihood of success.

A subsequent story published in May recounted the saga of Clarence Aaron, a first-time offender sentenced in 1993 to three life terms in prison for his role in a drug conspiracy. In 2008, the pardon attorney recommended that President George W. Bush deny Aaron’s request for a commutation even though his application had the support of the prosecutor’s office that tried him and the judge who sentenced him. The pardon attorney, Ronald L. Rodgers, did not fully disclose that information to the White House.

The handling of Aaron’s case prompted widespread criticism that the pardon office — which has rejected applications at an unprecedented pace under Rodgers — is not giving clemency requests proper consideration.

Members of Congress, law professors, and civil rights advocates have all taken up Aaron’s case, and many have called for a broader investigation of the pardon process. Now, not only is Aaron’s case being reviewed, the DOJ has been directed to do an in-depth analysis of recommendations for presidential pardons.

“We are now getting in place the framework for a comprehensive, independent study,” said Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman. The department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics will contract with an independent firm to conduct the pardons study, Hornbuckle said, which “will examine how petitions for pardon are adjudicated and whether any discernible bias exists.”

The number of pardons granted by each president has fallen in recent terms. At 189, President Bush granted less than half the number of pardons that President Bill Clinton handed out in his two terms. And with less than six months to go in his first term, Obama has pardoned only 22 people.

–Alex Brown

In a local case exemplifying changing attitudes on the War on Drugs, a jury found a farmer in Albemarle County not guilty of marijuana possession on Wednesday evening.

54-year-old Philip Cobbs was summoned to court to answer for two marijuana plants spotted on his 37-acre farm by a helicopter. About 10 law enforcement officials came to his farm to confiscate the illegal plants, armed with semi-automatic guns. Cobbs claimed that he was not aware of the marijuana plants on his property, which can sometimes grow in the wild.

The plants were discovered by a task force of law enforcement officials that routinely flies over farms searching for marijuana. Cobbs’ attorneys, Paul Belonick and Andrew Sneathern, unsuccessfully contested in a pre-trial motion that these helicopter flyovers violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against “unreasonable search and seizure.”

Sneathern, pointing out that the task force uses National Guard helicopters, protested, “We’re treating our citizens like they’re the enemy.”

As Sneathern noted, Virginia law dictates that anyone found guilty of a first offense of marijuana possession must have their drivers license revoked without exception.

While the jury ultimately found Cobbs not guilty, it took half a day to find 7 people out of 25 who were neutral enough on drug laws to serve as jurors. Many potential jurors had to be dismissed because of their strong disagreement with national marijuana laws.

Sneathern, who in the past has prosecuted drug possession cases for the Commonwealth, observed that the law is still “playing catch up” to “a massive sea change in public opinion about small amounts of marijuana.”

Support for marijuana legalization is currently at an all-time high of 56 percent, according to a Rasmussen poll released in May. 15 states and several cities have reduced penalties for marijuana possession; recently, Chicago decriminalized small amounts of marijuana.

The prosecutor’s closing statement warned the jury against nullification, which allows jurors to find a defendant innocent because of their dislike of a law. Most judges prevent defense attorneys from informing the jury of this right. New Hampshire passed a jury nullification law in June, a move that could significantly affect drug cases in the state.

In Virginia, Sneathern hopes that lawmakers and prosecutors all over the Commonwealth keep Cobbs’ trial in mind for future prosecutions.

“This is not a good use of their resources,” he said. “This was an extraordinarily expensive trial for them to bring when the best outcome they were going to get was a maximum of 30 days [in prison], and likely just a fine.”

He also questioned the non-financial cost of frightened citizens: “This is over in the sense that this case is over, but as [Cobbs] told me yesterday, it will take him a long, long time to get over the feeling of the invasion and the fear that he felt — and still feels every time he sees a helicopter fly over his house.”

One of the principal weapons used by James Eagan Holmes in the horrific Dark Knight Rises shooting would have been subject to a series of sharp restrictions under the now-expired federal Assault Weapons ban. The AR-15 rife carried by Holmes, a civilian semi-automatic version of the military M-16, would have been defined as a “semiautomatic assault weapon” under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. If the law was still in force, semiautomatic assault weapons would have been outright banned:

Such weapons were “unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess” under section (a)(v)(i).

Though there were several loopholes in the Violent Crime Control Act that allowed gun manufacturers to legally produce slightly modified AR-15s, a new version of the bill proposed in 2008 closed them.

The 1994 Act contained a sunset provision that caused it to automatically expire 10 years after passage, and it was not renewed in 2004, meaning that there are no federal restrictions on the ownership of AR-15s and similar weapons. Both Congressman Ed Perlmutter (who represents Aurora, the site of the shooting) and President Obama proposed a new assault weapons ban during their campaigns.

Today, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the President and Governor Romney to address gun violence, saying “maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country.”

Our guest blogger is Billy Corriher, associate director of research for Legal Progress.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who calls himself “America’s toughest Sheriff,” faced damning evidence of widespread racial profiling in a class action lawsuit that began yesterday in Phoenix. The suit was brought by several Latino persons who allege that Arpaio’s police force discriminated against them during traffic stops. In his opening statement, the plaintiffs’ attorney said, “A fundamental value of our nation is equal protection under laws, regardless of race or ethnicity.”

Arpaio’s attorney argued that “race and ethnicity had nothing to do with their traffic stops.” But the testimony of a criminal justice expert detailed who was targeted by Arpaio’s “immigration sweeps.” The expert said there was a “much higher likelihood” that deputies would run Hispanic names than non-Hispanic. He also testified that if a deputy ran a Hispanic name, the stop would take two minutes longer. Another recent study found that, in certain parts of Maricopa County, Latino drivers are more than nine times as likely to be stopped by Arpaio’s deputies than non-Latino drivers engaged in the same conduct.

One of the plaintiffs is a Mexican tourist who presented deputies with a valid visa and ID but was nevertheless arrested. The driver of the vehicle, a white person, was not cited for speeding (the deputies’ proffered reason for stopping the car).

After this trial concludes, Arpaio is still facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice which, in addition to racial profiling, accuses the sheriff’s office of using racial slurs and failing to investigate hundreds of sex crimes. DOJ is exploring the possibility of criminal charges against Arpaio for targeting his political opponents with frivolous arrests. Rather than fixing these systemic problems in his department, Arpaio is engaged in a wild goose chase for evidence of fraud in President Obama’s birth certificate.

The ACLU of Arizona has released thousands of emails it says prove that SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, was racially motivated. According to a report by the Arizona Republic, the emails, acquired through a public records request, are to and from the author of SB 1070, recalled Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce (R). The documents may help the ACLU to convince a federal judge to prevent the “show me your papers” section of SB 1070 from going into effect.

Key excerpts from the over 10,000 pages of emails include:

• “Last week, Denver’s illegal aliens sang our national anthem in Spanish and bastardized the words of OUR country’s most sacred song.”
• “Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox’s general Varigossa commanding an American city.”
• “They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty.”
• “Corruption is the mechanism by which Mexico operates. Its people spawn more corruption wherever they go because it is their only known way of life.”
• “Tough, nasty illegals and their advocates grow in such numbers that law and order will not subdue them. They run us out of our cities and states. They conquer our language and our schools. They render havoc and chaos in our schools.”
• “We are much like the Titanic as we inbreed millions of Mexico’s poor, the world’s poor and we watch our country sink.”

One email, with a the subject line “What’s a racist?” included the following:

• “I’m racist because I don’t want to be taxed to pay for a prison population comprised of mainly Hispanics, Latinos, Mexicans or whatever else you wish to call them.”
• “I’m a racist because I believe the News Media has a duty to tell us the names and race of criminals.”
• “I’m a racist because I object to having to pay higher sales tax and property tax to build more schools for the illegitimate children of illegal aliens.”
• “I’m a racist because I dislike having to push one for English and/or listening to a message in Spanish.”
• “Factual is not racial. Realism is not racism. The new definition of racist is anyone winning an argument with a liberal, minority, pacifist, bible banger, or moron.”

The part of SB 1070 that is currently being challenged by the ACLU is section 2(B), the “show me your papers” provision. The Supreme Court struck down three other provisions of the law earlier this summer, but left 2(B) intact, noting that there are potential constitutional problems with the section. The ACLU filed suit in federal court earlier this week contending that 2(B) unlawfully discriminates against Latinos and individuals of Mexican origin.

A recent poll of registered Latino voters found that 66 percent of those polled oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to leave “show me your papers” intact, while only 29 percent approve. Seventy-nine percent of Latino voters are concerned about racial profiling, responding likely to the question “how likely is it that Latinos who are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens will get stopped or questioned by police?” And 70 percent believe that allowing police to check immigration status will not increase public safety.

–Alex Brown

During the Republican primaries, millionaire Foster Friess became a household name for his more than $2 million in donations to the pro-Rick Santorum Red, White & Blue Super PAC. At that time, he told ThinkProgress that he would like to see more flexibility for big donors like himself to give directly to the candidates and full disclosure.

But like casino billionaire and Super PAC funder Sheldon Adelson, Friess has decided he would rather avoid the scrutiny of having his future political spending made public.

CNN reports that Friess “has decided his financial donations in the future will mostly be to [501(c)(4)] groups that do not have to disclose their donors.” He told the network:

I was kind of shocked to see the notoriety, the high profile I got. I didn’t know if I needed that. People looked at me as a villain.

The vast majority of Americans hate the massive influx of “independent” expenditures by Super PACs and secret-money 501(c)(4) groups enabled by the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United ruling. With the Senate Republican’s successful filibuster of the DISCLOSE Act, donors like Adelson and Friess are free to do what they are doing — simply move their donations to undisclosed groups and spend at will, while the public has no way of knowing who is behind the attack ads they bankroll.

Still, if Adelson and Friess really don’t want to be looked upon as villains, they could spend their money on something else.